Time to Cut and Run

Here at the Blasphemy Blog, we really wanted John Kerry to be president. It’s not just that we’re partisan Democrats, bleeding-heart liberals, former residents of Massachusetts, and lovers of Heinz ketchup; it’s that we really thought he would make a good president. He struck us, much like Al Gore did, as the boring, cool-headed but way-unhip sort of fellow our country needs in charge.

But he lost, and everyone says it was because he was a terrible candidate. Maybe so, maybe not. We are no judge of this sort of thing at the Blasphemy Blog, as evidenced by the fact that we still think Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were terrible candidates.

One thing we do remember from the campaign, though, is that John Kerry, in the first nationally-televised debate, called the President on the “base” issue. That is, he said something like, “It looks like we’re building permanent bases in Iraq, and that’s a bad idea. We shouldn’t have permanent bases.” The rationale for this being, if you build permanent military installations in a country you just liberated, it seems more like all you really want to do is colonize.

Our current President, who is one of the most talented scoffers we’ve ever seen, scoffed at this sort of talk. But really, truly, he was lying. We are building permanent bases in Iraq.

Look, no one, not even namby-pamby pacifists like us here at the Blasphemy Blog, ever wants to cut and run like a loser. But the U.S. military should really just get out of Iraq. We as a nation are just screwing up too much over there.

The occupation was corrupt from the beginning, and the hapless soldiers over there have as their main priorities keeping themselves and their supplies safe, not doing anything positive for the Iraq or its people.

It’s not going to be nice when we leave, no matter when we leave, so we should just get out now. We should admit that we were wrong and just go.

It’s the least terrible course of action. We had our chance to be honorable about this deadly enterprise, but we voted the current President back into office instead.